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CounterPunch
November
6, 2002
Jeb Bush: Left-Liberal?
by ANTHONY GANCARSKI
As regular readers of my work know, I share a
belief with folks like Florida scribe Shelton Hull that understanding
how stories are told in professional wrestling can be key to
understanding the ways in which stories are told in the political
realm. One canonical plot device in pro wrestling, by way of
example, is the heel turn. A face, or good guy, has a partner
with whom he wins the tag team titles. They lose the belts and
then the first cat's partner "attains individual glory"
by winning a singles strap. Angry, the first cat turns "heel"
(or bad guy) on his partner, the new champion. This heel turn
sets up a feud between the two; the motivation, obviously, is
the betrayal, and fans theoretically will side with either the
betrayer or the betrayed.
In politics, as in wrestling, motifs
recur. One of them is that every so often a political figure
will meet his fate when he takes an ill-advised airplane flight
(and who knew, by the way, that the Wright Brothers would have
such a political legacy?). Another is that politicians switch
parties from time to time. These high-profile switches usually
come with attendant rewards, as they give new life to the politicians
who make them. For examples, one need only consider the examples
of Norm Coleman or Jim Jeffords, both of whose profiles weren't
hurt by their acts of reinvention.
For all of their presumptive political
courage, the fact remains that neither Jeffords nor Coleman are
destined to be players on a truly national level. These are regional
guys, and the benefits they accrue from their switch obviously
come with limits. Certain members of the pundit class have speculated
as to what the ramifications would be of a figure like John McCain
turning Democrat. Sounds radical, to be sure, but the most effective
political defection of 2003 should be that of the Fixer himself,
Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Jeb has a number of built-in advantages
making such a switch more plausible than it seems on the surface.
As the nearly successful, virtually absentee campaign of Janet
"Gassed Her Own People" Reno indicates, the Florida
Democratic party grants a certain leeway to carpetbaggers and
opportunists willing to run under its banner. The Bushes are
not known for fixed principle; is it really such a stretch to
imagine Jeb switching his position on abortion or Homeland Security
enough to have him branded as a dangerous radical of the Tom
Daschle variety? Given how folks like Lawrence Eagleburger and
Poppy Bush were given such play when debating the finer points
of the imminent ground-game in Iraq, one can imagine Jeb getting
a lot of political mileage by embracing even the positions of
the Democratic Leadership Council.
For the Bushes to pull this off, it would
take a convergence of certain factors. A couple of fall guys;
rube local Republicans who could read Jeb out of the party and
declare him a traitor to his principles. Painting Jeb Bush as
a softie on some hot button issue would make for amusing television;
Jeb pronouncing how his positions have evolved in the face of
certain exigencies, or that "mistakes were made" in
his earlier political career, or that he's looking to "embrace
inclusiveness" would transcend the comedy category and allow
him to reinvent himself as a plutocrat and a populist all at
once.
It would be no great accomplishment for
Jeb to write a book, less of one to hire a hack to write it under
his name. Some amorphous tome with a bombastic title; a "Reinventing
The Democratic Party", or a "Politics of Hope and Change",
or, better still, "Beyond Compassionate Conservatism".
Al Gore parlayed such a prop into intellectual credibility, and
it is no stretch to imagine a Bush book garnering favorable reviews
across the spectrum of admissible political thought. The 2004
Presidential Campaign, if all went well, would be a good old-fashioned
tag match: the Incumbent President and his mystery partner squaring
off against brother Jeb and some attractive Vice-Presidential
candidate. A respected figure of the center like Senator Rockefeller
of West Virginia would fit the bill nicely. That would be an
election with no losers and all of us -- the American people!
-- as winners.
Anthony Gancarski, a regular contributor to CounterPunch, recently
had his work recognized in Utne Reader's "Web Watch".
Email him at Anthony.Gancarski@attbi.com.
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October 26
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